The Children’s Health Insurance Program, known as CHIP, is a federal program that provides coverage for kids from families that earn too much to be on Medicaid and too little to afford private insurance. 

Lawmakers in Washington failed to reauthorize CHIP by the September 30 deadline and have yet to act, leaving the nine million children and around 370,000 pregnant women across the nation who rely on it in limbo.

According to a recent report in the Chicago Tribune, the roughly 255,000 children who get insurance through CHIP have nothing to worry about until next October because funding is in place, but families in many other states are not as lucky. 

Here in Chicago, a group of first-year medical students from the University of Chicago are gathering their fellow students, local doctors, and health professionals for a downtown rally on Thursday to pressure legislators to reauthorize the program. 

Morning Shift talks to U of C medical students Kavia Khosla, Gina Lenti, and Katie Ellis about CHIP and why they’re helping to organize the effort.